From Ashes Reborn (Live) 2014

Genre: Contemporary Jazz

My parents were transplants from the Rocky Mountain West to Southwest Michigan, where they built a life and raised five children. Our burgeoning family outgrew an apartment and a small, one-bath ranch house in Kalamazoo, then moved to a new development in the suburbs where I grew up. We led a charmed and privileged life with adults who valued each of us for our individuality.

For a family accustomed to camping trips to Lake Michigan and elsewhere in the vacation months, summer in the suburbs proved to be pretty boring. So, in the mid-1960s our parents started scouting a suitable piece of lake property to buy and eventually build a summer home on, where we kids could enjoy everything that Michigan had to offer: fishing, turtle-hunting, boating, swimming, water-skiing.

My grandparents had built a cabin in the mountains outside Boulder when they retired; I’m sure our parents had that in mind when they purchased a lakefront lot just northwest of Battle Creek. Without a house there, the first few years were devoted to rustic weekend adventures with pop-up and tents, when we swam and picnicked and got to know all the lake’s flora and fauna.

In the early 1970s, while traveling through Indiana my parents saw the floor model of a prefab home manufactured by the Lindal Cedar Homes company. They fell in love with a design in the shape of a modified A-frame and soon worked with a local contractor to have the foundation laid and after the “kit” was delivered, had it assembled by local builders.

It especially appealed to our Dad because it would give him a chance to do some of the finishing work himself, including the tongue and groove placement of boards in the ceiling and floors. He was something of a weekend handyman, having laid the foundation and built a detached garage at our first house, (not to mention a basement fall-out shelter in case of nuclear attack—from designs provided by the federal government after the Cuban Missile Crisis).

Although the cedar home floorpan was not actually called a “Chalet,” my parents soon christened it with that name and for the rest of our childhood and adulthood it became the center of almost all good things in our lives.

The “Chalet” was the place where relatives and friends would congregate in the summer for water recreation, campfires, board games, socializing and gossip. It was also a place to air heady topics about politics and the current upheavals in the world in the 70s. We had serious (sometimes playfully contentious discussions) about philosophy, books, and topics of the day.

It was a place to celebrate Mother’s and Father’s Day, the Fourth of July, Memorial Day and all the other lazy days of summer. It’s where we listened to and played music, enjoyed the water, and ate delicious home-made food together—always in large quantities for which our family of seven was famous.

It’s the place where we brought girlfriends and boyfriends—later wives and husbands, children and grandchildren—where we strengthened ties to family friends we already had, and created bonds with new friends from work, school or other activities. It was a joyous place for food and fellowship.

Even though their children sometimes brought them anxiety and trouble (as the oldest I was always the first and the worst), our parents always responded with unconditional love and support. That love generously extended to the children of other families whose parents were not quite as cool as ours.

Our parents derived great joy from their kids—and grandkids when they came. They often repeated that they had had a wonderful life.

With all that good fortune, it was inevitable that some disasters would befall the family and poke holes in the narrative of the “perfect life.” To paraphrase the great blues guitarist Buddy Guy: “If you haven’t seen the blues, keep living.”

Disasters came quick succession. Our brother lost his beloved special needs daughter, who succumbed at age 11 to an autumn infection that should have been curable, but quickly took her life. Her death was the first rip in the fabric. It was followed by my diagnosis with cancer and then my sister’s. She would only be with us for a few more years.

In the midst of the mounting tragedies my parents were forced to witness in their older age, the Chalet—that symbol of our shared memories—burned in a catastrophic fire. Everything that makes cedar a desirable wood (a resin with pleasant aroma and natural insect repellent) worked against the 40 plus-year old structure. It ignited easily and was consumed quickly. My parents were lucky to get out alive and we all grieved the loss in our own ways.

My brother, sister-in-law and ill sister worked to help them rebuild. They reviewed blueprints for a new structure with features more conducive to a senior couple. They helped pick out fixtures and furnishings with the goal of having a new place built where our folks could start fresh and live out their remaining years on the lake.

The second “lake house”was beautiful and we all enjoyed many years there after the fire as we slowly recovered from what we’d all lost. Incredibly, there were telltale remains of what had happened: half burned photos and documents that had been retrieved and stashed in an RV shed that was untouched by the flames. The sight and smell of that debris—the cherished but tainted images—were a recurring, painful reminder of the trauma. As Thomas Wolfe said, “You can never go home again” and for me, nothing was ever quite the same again on the lake.

I got word of the fire immediately after it happened in early Spring, 2014. I was taking a Gift of Jazz class called The New Standard taught by Greg Tanner Harris, where I was tasked with creating another piece of music. My heart wasn’t really into it this time, but a melancholic tune kept coming to my fingers at the piano. It reflected for me the rise and fall of fortunes, the nostalgic memories of childhood lost to the fire, but also the sense of hope my parents held onto as they recreated a new life on the lake.

That summer after the fire I made my way back to Michigan to assess the damage for myself and help my folks in anyway I could, so I wasn’t in Denver when my piece “From Ashes Reborn” first premiered. The musicians assembled at Dazzle the night of Tuesday, June 24, 2014 at Dazzle are well-known in the Denver Jazz community: Al Hood on trumpet, Ken Walker on bass, Josh Quinlan on sax, Greg Tanner Harris on piano, and Alejandro Castaño on drums.

The theme I wrote is based on a repeated motif of 1-5-3 (or b3) of the major (or minor) scale, stated with different harmonic permutations. This device was intended to musically express the rising and falling of fortunes.

When I returned to Colorado and was given the video recording from the night at Dazzle, I was surprised by what I heard. Admittedly, the theme was intended to be melancholic, but the performance seemed much darker than what was on the printed page.

As it turns out, there were several wrong notes played that night. Specifically every time a B natural was called for, the horns played a Bb instead, which I might have caught and corrected had I been around for rehearsal that afternoon.

It’s possible that the charts got jumbled in my rush to get out of town and that I transposed the horn parts incorrectly. It’s also possible it was a sight reading error since the players only had about 10-20 minute rehearsal time in the afternoon to work through everything before the pieces were performed before a live audience in the evening.

So, close listeners (and music nerds) should know that this is a “doctored” recording. Technological breakthroughs have enabled me to go back in and correct those errors. This 2025 version is an composite of the live recording with all of the solos (sax, trumpet and piano) exactly as they were played that night, but with new MIDI versions of the theme as I re-“recorded” the horn parts at the beginning and end to more accurately reflect the “dots” on the page (i.e., I replaced the Bbs with Bs). It’s the first time I’ve used this technique. Hopefully it sounds OK and comes across as a fitting ode to a beloved place.